“True Slavery Was Never Practiced in the South”

You can’t make this stuff up. I’ve written about Sea Raven Press in the past, specifically in reference to their book on Nathan Bedford Forrest for teens. This particular title, Everthing You Were Taught About the Civil War is Wrong, Ask a Southerner, seems to be the most popular given the number of times I’ve seen it referenced on certain websites. Here is a list of a few of the corrections to what you learned. I’ve highlighted a few of my favorites. I particularly like the claim that Abraham Lincoln both wanted to isolate blacks in their own state and transport them back to Africa. Apparently, these were not mutually exclusive options.

• American slavery got its start in the North • the American abolition movement began in the South • most Southern generals did not own slaves, and many, like Robert E. Lee, were abolitionists • many Northern generals, like U.S. Grant, owned slaves and said they would not fight for abolition • according to the 1860 Census a mere 4.8 percent of Southerners owned slaves, 95.2 percent did not • Abraham Lincoln was a white separatist who wanted to send all blacks “back to Africa” • Jefferson Davis adopted a black boy and freed Southern slaves before the North did • Lincoln was not against slavery, he was against the spread of slavery • Lincoln supported the idea of corralling African-Americans in their own all-black state • true slavery was never practiced in the South • Lincoln “won” both the 1860 and 1864 elections with less than 50 percent of the American vote • Lincoln was a big government liberal, Davis was a small government conservative • there were tens of thousands of both black and Native-American slave owners • Lincoln started the Civil War, not the South • the North fought to “preserve the Union,” not to abolish slavery • the South fought to uphold the original Constitution, not to maintain slavery • it would have cost ten times less to free the slaves and reimburse their owners than fight the War • the Northern armies were racially segregated, the Southern armies were racially integrated • after emancipation 95 percent of all blacks voluntarily remained in the South • between 300,000 and 1 million African-Americans fought for the Confederacy • Europe would have supported the South but she was scared off by Lincoln’s war threats • Northern prisons had higher death rates than Southern ones • the original Ku Klux Klan was an anti-Yankee organization with thousands of black members • “Reconstruction” was a dismal failure, which is why the South is still recovering from the War

Now I know that 1 million black Confederates seems like a high number, but… Hope you enjoyed it.

"In this stunning and well-researched book, Kevin Levin catches the new waves of the study of memory, black soldiers, and the darker underside of the Civil War as well as anyone has." -David Blight, author of Race and Reunion

Even if he was, The Philanthropist, first published in Mount Pleasant, Ohio by Charles Osborne, predated Embree’s paper by three years. Osborne’s paper is considered to be the very first to openly advocate for the immediate abolition of slavery. A simple google search would have produced this for Seabrook…

Lee, an abolitionist? That’s an outright lie. He detested abolitionists, and said so repeatedly. But then, anyone who would claim hundreds of thousands of blacks fought for the south has clearly seceded from reality and is far past the point where he can possibly be reasoned with.

Well, as a Southroner, perhaps there may be a trace of truth in a couple of lines. The destruction of Arkansas during the Civil War was so complete that it has remained behind many other states. At least that is a subjective point-of-view having spent many years in Arkansas. Mississippi and Alabama also had problems and were into the 20th century before a recovery was strong.

Historically, U.S. Grant’s wife came from a slave holding family and she did own a few before the war. I do not think that makes Grant a slave owner…

Are you sure this is not a comic book??? It has some real laughers! Can this be serious? Thanks for the info on the publisher. I may have to get this book so I can have some serious frivolity!

My main question is how he defines “true slavery,” and why southern slavery doesn’t qualify. Is it the fact that slaves in the south could, in theory, be off the plantation as long as they had a pass? Is it the fact that southern churches gave at least lip-service to the humanity of slaves inasmuch as they ought to be baptized? Or is it something else? And doesn’t much of this criteria apply to most other slave societies, comparatively? IS there such a thing as “true slavery”? Again, the matter of defining it is what interests me here…although I can’t say I’ll ever pick up the book to see whether he defines it or not.

It is NOT true that Lee freed his slaves before the war. The terms of the will under which Lee inherited slaves from his father in law in 1857 *required* him to free those slaves within five years. He freed some of them (the ones not safely behind Union lines) in 1862. All his slaves who were within Union lines were entitled to their freedom under the Confiscation Act of 1862.

It’s true that Grant was a slaveowner before the war — his father in law gave him a slave as a gift. What Confederate propagandists leave out is that Grant freed that slave, and unlike Lee did so voluntarily.

O, wow. First, here’s the problems with Amazon reviews in certain instances. To give a fair review, you have to purchase the foul thing. Read it? I’m not sure how much. But you have to buy it. Second, I wonder if the publication of a book about the use of fallacious logic that was basically this book annotated with explanations of each logical fallacy ok as fair use. Because, just from the highlights, there’s quite a bit of cherry-picking going on regarding Lincoln. Third, I promise there was a third but I am enraged to the point of forgetting it.

Lochlainn Seabrook is an unreconstructed Southern author of over thirty adult books, with a twenty-five year background in the fields of the American Civil War, anthropology, the paranormal, etymology, comparative mythology and religion, and thealogy (female-based religion). The grandson of an Appalachian coal-mining family, Mr. Seabrook is a seventh generation Kentuckian and the sixth great-grandson of the Earl of Oxford. Sometimes referred to as the “American Robert Graves” (after the prolific English writer, poet, and author), Mr. Seabrook’s literary works have been endorsed by leading authorities, bestselling authors, celebrities, noted scientists, esteemed Southern organizations, and well respected academicians from around the world. He is cousins with Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Johnny Cash, the Judds, Miley Cyrus, and Lee Ann Womack, and lives with his wife and family in historic Middle Tennessee.